Arming TSA officials not the answer

By Tiffany Hawk, Special to CNN

Updated 1:34 PM ET, Mon November 4, 2013

Photos: Gunfire at LAX28 photos

Fatal shooting at Los Angeles airport – Transportation Security Administration Officer Gerardo Hernandez, 39, was killed in a shooting at Los Angeles International Airport on Friday, November 1. Paul Ciancia, 23, armed with what police say was an assault rifle and carrying materials expressing anti-government sentiment, opened fire at LAX Terminal 3, killing Hernandez before being chased down. Ciancia has been charged with the murder of a federal officer and commission of violence at an international airport.

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Photos: Gunfire at LAX28 photos

Fatal shooting at Los Angeles airport – A passenger embraces a TSA screener at Los Angeles International Airport's Terminal 3 after it was reopened on Saturday, November 2 following a shooting. Four other people are recovering from injuries in the shooting.

Fatal shooting at Los Angeles airport – Injured traveler Bruce Reith, from Munich, Germany, is helped by two Los Angeles Airport Police officers as he makes his way on crutches to Terminal 3 for departure a day after injuring himself while escaping the shooting.

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Photos: Gunfire at LAX28 photos

Fatal shooting at Los Angeles airport – Workers tear down a temporary partition after Terminal 3 was reopened on November 2, a day after a shooting at LAX.

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Photos: Gunfire at LAX28 photos

Fatal shooting at Los Angeles airport – A Los Angeles Airport Police officer stands in front of Terminal 3 security screeners after law enforcement officials completed their investigation and prepare to reopen the terminal at LAX on November 2.

Fatal shooting at Los Angeles airport – This photo, from Terminal 3, shows what appears to be a weapon on the ground. Police said a man "pulled an assault rifle out of a bag and began to open fire" Friday, killing one person and injuring others before being shot and taken into custody.

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Photos: Gunfire at LAX28 photos

Fatal shooting at Los Angeles airport – Law enforcement officers gather in Terminal 3 near the scene of the shooting.

Fatal shooting at Los Angeles airport – Passengers evacuate the airport after the incident, which airport officials said began about 9:30 a.m. The gunfire and the airport's announcement of the incident provoked chaos among travelers, passengers said.

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Photos: Gunfire at LAX28 photos

Fatal shooting at Los Angeles airport – People hide inside a bathroom stall at the airport after the gunshots were reported.

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Photos: Gunfire at LAX28 photos

Fatal shooting at Los Angeles airport – Thousands of travelers were delayed after the incident closed the airport for hours.

Fatal shooting at Los Angeles airport – First responders and emergency vehicles arrive at the airport.

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Story highlights

Tiffany Hawk: 9/11 left a legacy of security measures by airlines and airports

Friday's shooting at LAX raises new security concerns, she says

Hawk: Violence in schools, malls and cinemas is more prevalent than terrorism

Arming airline workers -- often underpaid and over-stressed -- is a bad idea, she says

We don't know much about the shooting at Los Angeles International Airport just yet, but it has clearly jangled our collective nerves, dredging up the fear and shock and pain of 9/11 -- the wellspring of our modern airport security process -- reminding us that more than a decade later, flying is still a fraught experience.

For those of us who were working for United or American, that day in 2001 changed everything. When we finally got back onboard, our workplace now included air marshals, armed pilots, martial arts lessons, tasers, fortified cockpit doors, and a new focus on vigilance, not warmth and customer service. "Welcome aboard" was less a greeting and more an opportunity to size you up.

So, reports of today's airport shooting raise new fears about weaknesses in this system. Is it possible that the gunman who shot and killed one TSA officer and injured two of his colleagues may have made it through LAX security with a high-powered rifle? (As of this writing, that is not yet clear.)

And is it time to start arming Transportation Security Administration officials?

No way.

I can understand the urge to react, to grasp at anything that might protect travelers. I too want air travel to be safe; hell, my husband is a pilot. But arming screeners at checkpoints well away from the airfield wouldn't be just another of the many precautions the airlines have taken to avert large-scale terrorism. It would simply be about protecting people from something that is everywhere in America: gun violence -- yes, at airports, and also at schools, at movie theaters, and malls.

Tiffany Hawk

If you're the kind of person who thinks that every teacher and hall monitor and mall cop and cinema usher should be armed, then you'll probably feel safer if we give guns to TSA officers. And maybe flight attendants and customer service reps and baggage handlers. And probably bus drivers and ballpark ticket takers, and hospital staff.

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Probably not if you work for an airline where people are often underpaid, overworked, sometimes inhumanely exhausted and locked, perennially, in famously contentious relationships with management.

Even before 9/11, it made me nervous that as airline workers, we skipped security entirely, simply hopping off the employee bus and entering a back door, bags and bodies unscreened. I feared that the next air disaster would be caused by a colleague with a bone to pick. Of course, I was wrong, and thankfully employees' bags are now screened, but giving guns to airline and airport workers is still a disquieting idea.

I was never a fan of armed pilots, even in the nightmarish days after 9/11. Another flight attendant might have felt reassured but, when I once walked into the cockpit of a 757 to find a pilot with a gun resting on his lap, I was most decidedly rattled. I hadn't met the guy before and had no reason to distrust him, but even the thought of an accident was enough to make me question my safety (turbulence anyone?).

And a couple of chilling mishaps -- an inadvertent discharge in the cockpit of a US Airways plane and an incident where a JetBlue pilot lost his gun in an airport -- demonstrate the potential dangers of even a best-case-scenario arming of the nation's nearly 50,000 TSA agents.

Unquestionably, terrorism is a real concern for airlines, but like it or not, as Americans, we have also have to worry just as much about angry neighbors with guns.

To fight our justified fear, some will undoubtedly push for more guns and others for fewer. One thing is for certain -- we will continually be forced to debate this. I only hope that we can find some common ground before the next reminder.